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Full-Text Articles in Law
Defunding State Prisons, W. David Ball
Defunding State Prisons, W. David Ball
Faculty Publications
Local agencies drive criminal justice policy, but states pick up the tab for policy choices that result in state imprisonment. This distorts local policies and may actually contribute to increased state prison populations, since prison is effectively “free” to the local decisionmakers who send inmates there. This Article looks directly at the source of the “correctional free lunch” problem and proposes to end state funding for prisons. States would, instead, reallocate money spent on prisons to localities to use as they see fit — on enforcement, treatment, or even per-capita prison usage. This would allow localities to retain their decision-making …
Immigration Federalism: A Reappraisal, Pratheepan Gulasekaram, Karthick Ramakrishnan
Immigration Federalism: A Reappraisal, Pratheepan Gulasekaram, Karthick Ramakrishnan
Faculty Publications
This Article identifies how the current spate of state and local regulation is changing the way elected officials, scholars, courts, and the public think about the constitutional dimensions of immigration law and governmental responsibility for immigration enforcement. Reinvigorating the theoretical possibilities left open by the Supreme Court in its 1875 Chy Lung v. Freeman decision, state and local offi- cials characterize their laws as unavoidable responses to the policy problems they face when they are squeezed between the challenges of unauthorized migration and the federal government’s failure to fix a broken system. In the October 2012 term, in Arizona v. …
The Anti-Immigrant Game, Pratheepan Gulasekaram, Karthick Ramakrishnan
The Anti-Immigrant Game, Pratheepan Gulasekaram, Karthick Ramakrishnan
Faculty Publications
Laws such as Arizona's SB 1070 are not natural responses to undue hardship but are products of partisan politics.
Why Should States Pay For Prisons, When Local Officials Decide Who Goes There?, W. David Ball
Why Should States Pay For Prisons, When Local Officials Decide Who Goes There?, W. David Ball
Faculty Publications
In the United States, states typically pay for prisons, even though the decisions that lead to prison admissions — arresting, charging, and sentencing — are made by local officials. The practice of state subsidies is relatively recent: there were no state prisons in the early part of the country’s history, and even as state institutions began to be developed, they largely supported themselves financially, rendering the notion of subsidies moot. Given the political economy of local decision-making, local preferences are unlikely to result in optimally-sized state prison populations. This Article suggests that since state prison subsidies may not be desirable …
'There It Is: Take It' Endangered Species And Water Management In The San Francisco Bay Delta, W. David Ball
'There It Is: Take It' Endangered Species And Water Management In The San Francisco Bay Delta, W. David Ball
Faculty Publications
This paper explores endangered species and water management in the San Francisco Bay Delta. Two endangered species, the Delta Smelt and the Winter-run Chinook Salmon, use the Bay Delta for crucial portions of their life cycle. At the same time, California's agricultural industry, as well as population centers to the South, require substantial outflows of Bay-Delta water. The paper explores the multi-jurisdictional regulation of the Bay-Delta's water, takes a hard look at the purported success of the Environmental Water Account (EWA) program, and reports on the tensions between scientists at regulatory agencies and the political appointees who oversee them. We …
Rethinking The Role Of The Dormant Commerce Clause In State Tax Jurisdiction, Bradley W. Joondeph
Rethinking The Role Of The Dormant Commerce Clause In State Tax Jurisdiction, Bradley W. Joondeph
Faculty Publications
Perhaps the biggest controversy in state and local taxation today concerns the constitutional authority of the states to impose taxes on goods purchased over the Internet. Some argue that the current, bright-line rule of "physical presence" is the appropriate standard for determining a state's jurisdiction under the dormant Commerce Clause. Others contend that jurisdiction should instead be resolved on the more pragmatic basis of a firm's "economic presence" in the taxing state. Regardless, commentators seem to agree that the dormant Commerce Clause imposes jurisdictional limits on state taxation; the dispute concerns the content of those standards. This article contends that …